The meeting in Riyadh of presidents Donald Trump and Ahmed al-Sharaa followed the US leader's announcement that sanctions on Syria would end. These developments open the door to Syria’s stabilisation and reconstruction as a state at peace with its neighbours in partnership with Washington. Whether anyone passes through that door remains, however, an open question.
Acting on the advice of the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, President Trump decided to take a calculated risk on the Syrians who deposed Bashar al-Assad in December 2024 and who subsequently formed a government and issued a constitutional declaration. It is a risky move for at least three reasons.
First, the regime headed by al-Sharaa is composed, in large part, of people once affiliated with Al-Qaeda. Indeed, al-Sharaa himself is still officially designated a terrorist by the US. Although the new government often seems to be saying the right things about the rule of law and its opposition to terrorism, thousands of Syrians have been violently victimised by armed bands affiliated with Syria’s new leaders. If Syria’s leaders either support, ignore, or fail to suppress violent sectarianism, President Trump will reap significant criticism for taking an ill-advised chance on them.
Second, even if Syria’s new government is, as President al-Sharaa has strongly indicated, sincerely interested in citizenship-based inclusivity and firmly dedicated to protecting all Syrians from vigilantism and vengeance, it is still very far from establishing a monopoly on armed force in Syria.
Nearly all Syrians—of whom 90% were impoverished by the Assad regime’s murderous kleptocracy—want the new leaders to succeed. But most Syrians have no relationship with, much less control over, lawless men with weapons. Is anyone other than Donald Trump willing to make a sizeable bet on who will be running Syria one month or one year from now?
Third, Israel is waging a one-sided war against post-Assad Syria. Capital, as the expression goes, is a coward. American economic sanctions, which may take Congress several months to dismantle entirely, have certainly, to date, dissuaded reconstruction-related grants, loans, and investments from entering Syria.
Read more: What needs to happen to rebuild Syria
Obstacles to reconstruction
President Trump now wishes to remove that barrier. But will anyone commit significant resources to Syria’s reconstruction with Israel bombing Syria at will and occupying Syrian territory in violation of the 1974 Agreement on Disengagement? Clearly, President Trump wants Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree quickly to a renewed and open-ended Gaza ceasefire. But is he willing to confront Netanyahu over Syria as well? Will he perceive domestic political risks in doing so?
Trump has tried to mitigate all three risks by pressing al-Sharaa to expel all terrorists from Syria, to help the US defeat the Islamic State (IS) (including by taking over IS-related detention centres), and to make peace with Israel by joining the Abraham Accords. Al-Sharaaa may well have ways and means at his disposal to accomplish some of these objectives. But making peace with Israel will, in the first instance, require Israel to stop attacking Syria.
Its official explanation for waging war centres on what is described as a lesson learned from Hamas's October 7, 2023, attack on Israel: whenever an Islamist group espousing violence manifests itself on Israel’s borders, strike preemptively and decisively.
However, other, non-official explanations centre on the alleged desire of Netanyahu to preserve, at all costs, his status as Israel’s wartime leader. This explanation suggests that he is trying to avoid being held accountable for what happened on October 7 by arguing that Israel, at war, cannot spare the time to examine the event in detail and adjudicate official responsibility.
